How to Kill a Nonprofit

Jeanpierre had played a key role in obtaining the federal grant, according to the federal audit. He had persuaded his fellow board members to allow a man by the name of Jim Payne to use the nonprofit as a sort of clearinghouse to obtain the grant. Payne was a consultant who had built a career out of ruining minority-assistance programs. Payne would write a federal grant application for a program called the Minority Business Development Center, which would help the city's minority business owners network and find contracting opportunities. Payne would also run the program, and in return the UEDC would have access to a generous new revenue stream.

Jeanpierre was clearly eager to make it happen, and the board members bought the idea, perhaps unaware that Payne had made a mess of this exact type of program just a couple of years before. In 1994, after accepting a similar-sized grant for another nonprofit in the San Joaquin Valley, Payne and his deputy director suddenly took several weeks of sick leave, then disappeared, leaving the program in disarray, according to the audit.

Swinson says he was unaware of Payne's past, but he did know the nonprofit had a responsibility to spend its grant money by the book. And that's where he ran into trouble.

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Almost since the day Swinson joined the board of the Urban Economic Development Corp., he had been at odds with its executive director, Comer Marshall. A former military man, Marshall is an affable gentleman with a wide network of political connections in San Francisco. At the time, he was serving as president of a mayor-appointed panel of commissioners who oversee the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

But by many accounts, Marshall was doing a lousy job running the Urban Economic Development Corp. When Swinson joined the board, he says he immediately began questioning many of Marshall's financial decisions -- little things such as whether the organization really needed four private parking spaces, or why Marshall billed the company for a trip to see his relatives. Swinson has a tendency to sermonize, and it's easy to imagine Marshall and others at the organization rolling their eyes when the old gentleman would get on his soapbox.

"I know I was not always appreciated," Swinson says. "They didn't like me asking questions. I'd start talking and everybody would begin looking at their watches."

Swinson says he was especially critical of the new Minority Business Development Center, under the direction of Jim Payne. Though Payne's program operated out of a separate office, its finances were intermingled with the nonprofit's bank accounts, and Swinson says he could never tell where the money was going. Payne and his deputy, Vijaya Rogers, would go on long trips together and come back with outrageous travel expenses without providing all the receipts. Payne was also billing the federal government for long hours he clearly wasn't working, according to the audit. To further taint the appearance of his operation, he had hired his daughter to work for him in a salaried position, raising questions of nepotism.

Swinson was not pleased. Money was flying out the window, and nobody in the nonprofit appeared to have the will to stop it. Within a year, Jeanpierre quietly dropped off the board, leaving Swinson to deal with an organization that was quickly turning against him.

Finally, Swinson laid down the law. For months the Commerce Department had demanded that Payne straighten out his act by providing more documentation on how his program was spending the government's money. Now, with Jeanpierre gone, it was up to Swinson to respond to the agency's mounting concerns. Swinson told the nonprofit's staff that he wouldn't sign any more checks without invoices. And he declared that Payne and Rogers would have to be accompanied by either himself or Marshall on all future business trips.

That's how Swinson ended up going on a trip to Chicago with Marshall, Payne, and Rogers. Swinson says as soon as they arrived, Marshall went one way and Payne and Rogers went another, leaving him to attend the conference alone. He says he didn't see any of them again for the rest of the trip.

But Rogers told a different story. On her return, Rogers told Swinson's colleagues on the board that he had groped her outside a hotel at the conference. The accusation prompted the board to meet behind Swinson's back and vote him out of his position as chairman of the board and to exclude him from future meetings (although he officially remained on the board). Though Swinson denied the allegation and nothing was ever investigated or legally pursued, the damage was done. Swinson was silenced.